It's damn hard to live in this city, if you're in any way "creative." Believe justiNYC, he knows. But you might say, "What the hell does this have to do with real estate? or with real estate agents, for that matter?" Just look around. I just happen to most likely be the most obsessively creative real estate agent on the planet.
According to Crain's NY Business (spotted first by Curbed),
"More than 40% of the city’s creative workers made less than $35,000 last year and half have little or no personal savings, according to the poll of 1,200 creative workers."
The truth is, if you aren't at least somewhat creative, you will NOT survive in this city. Living here is about improvising and jerry-rigging anything and everything you can get your hands on (or foot in) in a way that makes it balance (at times, just barely), so you can. Take this blog for example. Do you think that anyone ever showed justiNYC how to blog? or even what a blog was? When i began blogging real estate, there were less than 50 real estate blogs in existence and the only one in NYC was Curbed.com. Check out this interview from a while back to see what i mean. These days, I find homes and studios for artists mostly (with a lot of help from the LoftNinja, of course). The creative individual will venture into a neighborhood that is less than desirable because it is the only place that he/she can afford and at (primarily) their own expense transform the dirty rock into a diamond. Once everyone comes to see the diamond, its all friggin over! Everyone wants to be a part of the art and will soon come knocking in flocks to live around it, no matter what the expense. Its expensive to be un-creative. This is why the creative type must soon move from his 'hood installation' to start the whole process over again, further out, up and/or away.
Whatever you do in NYC must be tweaked and polished. This requires creative instincts and a drive to do something just a little different from everyone else. At times, you have to be the type that doesn't follow the pack in order to do this and as this article demonstrates, a city such as NYC (although priding itself as being the mecca of the creative sort) does not tend to endorse such lifestyles (as much as in days past).
High costs threaten NYC's creative status [Crains NY]
While we're on the subject, here are a couple of FREE tips for the broke-ass creative types:
Can't get that movie produced?
Celtx- Free TV and Film Production Software [via Download Squad]
Need more friends? Clone some!
[Energyface Blog via LifeHacker]
Dead friggin broke? What, no furniture?
[try GarbageScout (you'll thank me for this one)]
